Portsmouth City Borough Council Cabinet Member for Housing and Tackling Homelessness Meeting

Apologies were received from James Hill, Director of Housing, Neighbourhood and Building Services.

There were no declarations of interest.

Phil Bentley, Head of Estate Services, presented the information only report, the purpose of which was to update the Cabinet Member on the progress of the roll out of updated waste provisions at HRA blocks in Portsea, and to provide an update on the next stages of the project.

Resident Consortium Questions & Comments

Mary Bailey stated she had been part of the trial and found everything to be working really well despite some issues with other local residents using their bins.  She noted that estate services were doing their best to remedy that situation and gave them 12 out of 10.

Greg Anderson asked what support was there for residents with mobility issues and for those for whom English was not their first language.

It was clarified that during the project there had been a lot of engagement with residents, both before and during the project.  This had identified just two residents needing assisted support to take their rubbish out.  For those residents, Estate Services had set up a regular time and day of the week when their waste would be collected and their containers returned to them.

In relation to languages, as the resident engagement progresses, and estate services identify language barriers, there were options such as the webpage and letters in the appropriate languages.

Members' questions

In response to Members' questions, the following was clarified:

·       The issue of food waste collections in Cosham had been referred to the local estates operations manager to attempt to address the lack of engagement.    It was noted that in the usual process of engaging with residents when bins were being misused there wee opportunities to redirect the waste and encourage food recycling which had generally worked well.

·       The project had moved to Buckland and Landport and not further north in the city, as it made sense in terms of the high concentration of communal housing blocks in those areas.   However, the general processes were in place across all estate services holistically and would cover Hawthorn and Highbury.  The only difference would be that the bin areas had not yet been upgraded to cope with all the different outputs of waste.

·       Points 4.1 & 4.2 of the report were about having capacity on site to cope with a week's worth of waste which would allow for only one collection a week, rather than two, thereby reducing vehicle emissions. It was clarified that there were no plans to move to fortnightly collections.

·       There were some complaints early on about 'side waste' which were investigated by estate services, to ascertain how the waste provisions were being used and to see if the materials could have gone into different bins on site.  In terms of what was now being provided, the residents were getting the correct volumes on a weekly basis and there was no reduction in operations.  There were similar complaints before but now it was about attempting to change user behaviours and educating on the use of the right provision for the right waste stream.

·       The bins that had been put in place could be repurposed should the need arise.

·       The size of recycling bins varied but generally there had been an increase in recycling bins, with a reduction in refuse bins.

·       The trial had provided learning on what residents needed which had led to better signage, well lit bin areas and areas where residents felt safe to go and use the correct bins.  This along with strong engagement with residents at the trial sites, had made a difference to the proper use of the different waste streams.

·       Residents were not provided with food waste liners but each resident was provided with a small caddy which could be rinsed out so did not necessarily require a liner.  The caddy contents could be tipped directly into the communal bin, which was lined.  Engagement with residents was about trying to persuade people on the benefits of not putting food waste in the communal refuse bin.  The caddy liners were available in most shops if required.

 Cabinet Members' comments

Cllr Sanders observed that, as an administration, they were proud to have trialled the food waste collections and had found that CO2 emissions had been cut by 20% based upon what they would have been had that food waste gone into the general refuse collections which helped the city to meet its wider climate emergency goals.  He noted that the secondary legislation in relation to recycling was still awaited from Government.  Cllr Sanders stated that boosting recycling on housing estates was important and was pleased the service had picked up learning from the trials to take forward across the city.

DECISION

The Cabinet Member noted the information only report.